The Oxford English Dictionary was created in 1857, and was expected to be finished within ten years. The first edition was finally completed 71 years later.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
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Howard Axelrod was accidentally blinded in one eye in a freak accident when he was in college. Disoriented and depressed, he retreated to an off-the-grid cabin in the Vermont wilderness. He stayed there, alone, for 2 years. Now he's published a memoir about his period of renunciation, "The Point of Vanishing."
Is science really open to every good idea? Controversial biologist Rupert Sheldrake says modern science is mired in various dogmas - boundaries you're not supposed to cross, at least if you value your job and your reputation.
How come many of the latest pop songs sound as if they could have been released decades ago? Music journalist Simon Reynolds tells Steve Paulson that our obsession with our immediate past could get in the way of future creativity.
Steven Connor says there's much more to ventriloquism than exchanging quips with a wooden dummy. He tells Anne Strainchamps that a lot of this history has to do with the disembodied voice.
Sarah Bakewell is the author of “How to Live” an unorthodox biography of the great French philosopher and essayist Montaigne.
Tariq Ramadan is a Swiss-born philosopher who travels throughout the Islamic world trying to build bridges between European Muslim and conservative clerics.
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